Musk fired Twitter’s chief legal officer, and the task of content moderation fell to an employee named Yoel Roth, who happened to be a left-leaning Democrat. Musk wanted to reinstate the accounts of the conservative site the Babylon Bee and the psychologist and author Jordan Peterson. Both had been banned from Twitter for misgendering transgender people. Musk likened the reinstatements to “granting a [presidential] pardon” (528). Roth showed Musk an idea that he had been working on to downplay the reach of certain tweets and users rather than banning them outright, something he called “visibility filtering”; Musk liked this approach.

After Paul Pelosi, the husband of the Speaker of the House, was attacked in his home, Musk tweeted out a conspiracy theory about the attack. Roth warned Musk’s lawyer that the tweet would not go over well with advertisers. After Musk had taken over Twitter, Twitter’s ad revenue began tumbling.

Starting in early November, some online activists called for a boycott of brands that continued to advertise on Twitter. As a result, advertisers continued to withdraw from Twitter. Musk grew enraged and threaten to come after these advertisers. He tried to order Roth to stop the users who were calling for the boycott because he believed that they were engaging in blackmail.